STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Independence Party member John Tabacco likes what he’s seeing during the petition process and is thinking more seriously about making a run for Congress.

“It seems like the public sentiment has been pretty good,” he said.

Tabacco allies have been gathering petition signatures in order to get Tabacco into an Independence primary against Rep. Mike McMahon (D-Staten Island/Brooklyn).

The party has endorsed the incumbent in the race, but Tabacco thinks that Indy members should have one of their own in the mix.

After initially keeping a watchful distance from the proceedings, Tabacco went out with petition gatherers himself over recent weekends.

“We walked around,” he said. “It was fun.”

Tabacco said that his allies had collected close to the minimum amount of signatures required to get him on the ballot, but were looking to boost the numbers to discourage any potential petition challenges.

You’ll recall that Tabacco went through quite the petition challenge in his 2009 bid for the North Shore City Council seat.

“It’s going to be a highly contested election,” he said of the House race. “You know the [Independence] line means a lot to Congressman McMahon.”

For McMahon, the line basically replaces the Working Families Party (WFP) endorsement, which McMahon lost this year after he voted against the health-care bill.

Tabacco is still not sure he’s going to get in the race, saying it depends on how many total signatures he gets.

“It all comes down to the numbers,” he said. “I think we’ll have enough signatures to be able to get an Independence Party member into a primary. I’m trying my best.”

In case he does run, Tabacco said he has already registered a House committee with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and has raised “a few grand” in local contributions.

Despite his Wall Street background, Tabacco admitted that the federal fund-raising rules were a challenge to get a handle on.

“You need a lawyer and an accountant just to start,” he said.

MAS HEAD COUNT

Midland Beach mosque proponents held a rally at Borough Hall the other day, with one supporter making a curious claim about last month’s contentious meeting about the project.

Speaking to the crowd, Lana Safah, a spokeswoman for the Muslim American Society, said that a “majority” of those who attended the Midland Beach Civic Association meeting in June were anti-Muslim outsiders. Only a “minority” were actual community residents, she said.

Following that logic, one could posit that any anti-mosque sentiment expressed at the meeting came not from the community but from outside agitators.

But Ms. Safah was vague when we repeatedly asked her who these anti-Muslim types were.

“There were lots of outsiders,” she said during a press conference after the rally. “There were lots of known, anti-Muslim organizations who were there.”

Ms. Safah said that we would see “exactly” who was there if we looked at YouTube videos of the event.

When we put the question to her again, she was no more forthcoming, saying, “We know there were very well-known anti-Muslim organizations that were there.”

She again suggested that we look at the videos.

But when we said we may not know who was who in the crowd by looking at a video (this milieu not being our area of expertise), Ms. Safah only reiterated that we should look at the videos and the blogs.

Pressed a bit further, she said, “There were specific members of organizations who were there.”

After the press conference was over and the TV cameras turned off, we got an answer from another person at the rally.

They told us that among those in the crowd were Robert Spencer from Jihadwatch.com and Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com. The Web sites track extremist and terrorism issues and are considered by some to be Islamophobic.

Whatever the reluctance to name names, that didn’t exactly sound like a “majority” to us, and doesn’t square with Advance accounts of the meeting.

And judging from the protests we’ve seen in Midland Beach, there can be little doubt that there is actual grass-roots opposition to the mosque.

SLEEPOVER

Last week’s sweltering temperatures really hit home for Borough President Jim Molinaro.

Good thing that Molinaro has a second home of sorts in St. George.

Molinaro’s home and some others on his Fort Wadsworth street lost power Tuesday as the Island and the rest of the city were wilting under triple-digit temperatures.

Molinaro said that the power briefly came back on around 10 p.m. that night, but quickly went out again. That meant no air-conditioning, and anyone on the beep’s staff can tell you that no room can be cold enough for the boss.

So after a restless couple of hours, Molinaro finally decided to flee to his office at Borough Hall around midnight for some shut-eye. The power was still on down there.

Molinaro took a sheet and a pillow and sacked out on the leather couch in his office. Companion Joan Cusack, who was with him that night, slept in an armchair.

“It was very quiet,” he said of being in the building so long after dark. “And I don’t want the city to think that I’m looking to be paid overtime.”

Molinaro went home to shower about 6 a.m. on Wednesday and then returned to work. The power came back on at his home later that morning.